The 22nd April has, for 54 years, annually marked a very important, globally recognized day: Earth Day. A reminder of the significance of environmental conservation and sustainability, this day raises awareness of the struggles our planet is facing and inspires change from those who are eager to help in any way we can.
Here at Milners we can openly admit that we are far from perfect when it comes to being a fully eco-friendly business, particularly being a part of the textile trade, however we do try to be environmentally conscious with the decisions that we make.
At the beginning of 2024 a government grant became available that would allow us to make the building more energy efficient, which in turn kickstarted a discussion within our team of how we can do better in relation to our effect on the environment as a business. Once we started chatting we soon realised that it was a rather large can of worms, but one that certainly needed opening! So we decided to ask a decarbonisation specialist to come in and get the ball rolling. They performed a carbon footprint assessment, which helped us to understand where we were producing the most greenhouse gas emissions, and gave us ideas on how to reduce them.
We learnt that we were already doing a lot of what we could to lower our carbon footprint. This included reusing polythene bags that we receive from our suppliers in our own online orders, using recyclable paper bags and brown paper as our main packaging material, and organising Keith’s schedule so that when he’s out in the van his appointments are close by in proximity so as to use as little fuel as possible.
We also discovered though, that there is of course always more that can be done. As part of the team’s weekly staff meeting, we have now made it a point to bring up the ‘Milners Sustainability Project’ each week to brainstorm ideas of how we can become more eco-friendly, and set tasks when possible in order to achieve this.
It started with small changes, such as looking into the tissue paper we use as a final packaging touch in our ladieswear department, which turned out to be made from recycled materials but wasn’t recyclable itself, and therefore trying to find a better alternative. This then progressed onto grander ideas, such as using the grant to make the building itself more energy efficient which we are hoping to complete within the next year. The team is also discussing how we can reduce our paper consumption and looking into a way of offsetting our carbon footprint through something along the lines of a tree planting scheme!
For a lot of what we are doing, we are just at the ‘ideas stage’ and know that we have a little way to go before we can say that we really are doing ALL that we can as a business for the environment, while still providing our products and services. Therefore Earth Day for us is a reminder to keep having the discussions, so that eventually the theories will turn into the practical! In the midst of all this, we want to be transparent with the community about what we are doing and trying to achieve, and hope that we will have exciting updates for you all in the very near future.
Happy Earth Day 🌍